The past year has been a tremendous year of growth and relationship building for our youth! Here are a few of the highlights from the 2016 year:
- We continued with our Wednesday Night D Groups as our middle and high school students gathered to discuss the passage for the upcoming Sunday. Leadership was provided by Mark Snipes, Kate Ayers, Emily White, Abigail Ballew, Joshua Ballew.
- Sunday School continues to be a time of fellowship and discussion with leadership from David Wolf and Samuel Lian.
- We also continued a Youth Worship Arts program on Sunday afternoons. Youth gather together, learn music, and explore ways that they can use their gifts and talents in worship on a regular basis. The lunch for youth on Sunday was provided by our small groups as well as generous individual. We are grateful for their generosity. Leadership was provided by Judy Fiske, Marty Watkin, Ron Simmons and Samuel Lian.
- We attended CBFVA’s Mission Madness weekend at Walnut Grove Baptist in Mechanicsville. We slept at the church and then spent the weekend doing mission work
- We had several youth participate in the VA Baptist All State Choir. They represented Tabernacle. There was an all day Saturday rehearsal in January and then an all day rehearsal on Friday and Saturday morning before the concert on Saturday afternoon. Well done youth!
- We gathered together for a youth retreat at Eagle Eyrie Conference Center in Lynchburg by CBFVA. We spent the weekend learning about how to be the hands and feet of Christ to our neighbors. Leadership was provided by Emily Witt, David Gorman and Samuel Lian.
- We gathered several times as a group for various social events- Touring the City, River at the Welstead’s house, The Star Wars themed Halloween Party, Donuts Day at James River, movie nights and supporting our youth in various sporting and extra-curriculuar activities. Our Christmas party was hosted by the Burgesses at their new home.
- We also participated in “Mission Matters” video competition sponsored by Entrust Credit Union and won a grant of $2000. Some of that money was used to support ReEstablish Richmond and the Rones in Myanmar.
Our summer was very busy with 3 different camps available for our students under the leadership of Lindsey Fulcher while Samuel was with PASSPORTkids!:
- We attended UniDiversity Youth Camp again this summer, and focused on the theme of “ReFocus.” We explored how the world teaches us one thing, but Christ calls us to something else. Leadership was provided by Kristen Koger, Marty Watkin, Gerard Burton and Lindsey Fulcher.
- We attended Animate for again, which is a worship and arts conference at Samford University. We explored ways youth can lead in the Church universal; this has helped our youth in the Worship Arts program as they use their musical talents.
- We also spent our summer at Metro Baptist Church leading a week of CLUE Camp, alongside Eric Hasha and his youth from First Baptist Church, Jefferson City. We spent the week teaching children about leadership and how even though they are young, they can still be leaders in our community.
We thank Lindsey Fulcher was her leadership and guidance to our youth over the summer as well as all the chaperones who took their time off to be with our youth. We look forward to seeing how our youth continue to learn about themselves and grow into the people God has formed them to be. The youth group has grown up in size in the past year with new faces and we warmly welcome each and every one of them.
Grace and Peace,
Samuel Lian
